


Ashes

by penitence_road



Category: HuGっと！プリキュア | Hug tto! Precure
Genre: Gen, a smidge of George/Listol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 15:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17748689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penitence_road/pseuds/penitence_road
Summary: Listor loses everything, but of course it would be much too easy to lose it all at once.





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> The romanization of the squirrel's name being a hot mess, I've tagged his name as it's given on the wikia. For the fic itself, however, I went with the one that reads the best to my eye, Listor. The text that leads the story is the prompt it was written for. 
> 
> A quick look at how Bishin wound up chained to a rock at the start of the series, and why Listor didn't do anything about it earlier.

_Or perhaps, once one begins, there are only endings._

 

“Listor!  Listor, help me!”  Bishin thrashes against the chains tightening around him, the gleam of toge-power in his claws fading with the contact of the treated iron. 

“Please don’t make things any worse for yourself than they already are, Bishin.”  The words are ice in Listor’s throat, too compact and too cold, and Bishin’s eyes widen in a now-familiar expression of shock and fury.

"You—you traitor!  You _traitor, Listor!_   You traitor!” 

The mecha—one of Doctor Traum’s, hastily brought out of the lab in response to Bishin’s refusal to obey direct orders, and the subsequent breakdown—begins to drag Bishin down the hall in the direction of the holding cells, and Listor closes his eyes as Bishin’s shouting breaks down into wailing—Harry’s name, mostly, and imprecations against Listor, and the mecha, and the future in general. 

President Kurai stands next to him, book in hand.  Closing his eyes is all Listor _dares_ to do.  Anything else—a word said out of turn, a finger lifted the wrong way, and he will land in a cell right beside Bishin, and then where will they be? 

“I’m sorry it had to go this way,” the President says, voice soft.  The words sound genuine enough—even if it would buy him back everything he’s ever lost, Listor couldn’t say if he believes the man or not. 

He opens his eyes and stares at the floor.  Leashes back the toge-power glimmering around his own palms, then wills his hands to unclench and hang loosely at his sides.  The President is still watching.

_This only happened because we didn’t stop the Precure back then.  The wouldn’t have happened if we had stopped time sooner.  Bishin will understand eventually—I’ll make sure of it._ He tests the replies and discards them, one by one.  Too self-effacing.  Too judgmental.  Too presumptuous. 

“So am I,” he says as the last echoes of Bishin’s voice fade away, the sobbing and snarling lost to the dim halls. 

On the other side of the room, Doctor Traum tsks and adjusts his hat. 

“Well, he’s so young still.  He’ll understand in time,” he opines.  Then he chuckles, humor skating over darker depths like an insect skimming the surface of a stagnant pond, and casts Listor a sideways glance.  “Not too much time, one hopes.”

Traum on one side, Kurai on the other—it had been the same back at the beginning of all this, and since then, it’s just been one ending after another.  The loss still throbs inside of him every day, but with a decreasing frequency as time carries him farther and farther away from happiness.  Listor doesn’t have to school his face to blankness.  There is nothing to express (nothing left to express) but determination. 

“The less time it takes, the less time he will have to suffer,” he says, and leaves his head bowed as he turns to face the President.  “Preparations for opening the branch office are underway.  I’ll have a report for you by the end of the day.”

“Dependable as ever,” George murmurs.  He reaches up and presses his hand to Listor’s cheek—a lingering pressure, gentle but more intimate than has ever been earned.  “Soon enough, Listor.”  And then he draws back, putting the proper space between them, and says, almost off-handedly.  “An eternity without end.”

“All glory to Criasu Corporation.”  The refrain tastes like ashes on his tongue, but he joins Doctor Traum in the speaking of it all the same.


End file.
